A Minimalist hypothesis about resumptive pronouns is that they should be no different from ordinary pronouns ( McCloskey 2006 ). The article substantiates this hypothesis with respect to a particular view of pronouns: pronouns are ‘‘elsewhere’’ elements. Just as the interpretation of ordinary pronouns, on this view, is determined by competition with anaphors, so the interpretation of resumptive pronouns is determined by competition with gaps. On the basis of new facts in Hebrew and systematic differences between optional and obligatory pronouns, I argue that the tail of a relative clause movement chain is realized as the least specified form available. Since their interpretive properties are fully determined by external factors, resumptive pronouns must be part of the syntactic derivation, not items merged from the (traditional) lexicon.

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Lasnik (1999) has claimed that NegDPs in derived subject position cannot be interpreted in the embedded clause and do not undergo A-chain reconstruction. We show that with a well-defined set of predicates, including deontic modals and raising predicates, scope diminishment of NegDP is observed. We argue, nevertheless, that scope diminishment in these cases is not produced by A-chain reconstruction. We also show that A-chain reconstruction of the indefinite part is possible. We conclude that the claim that NegDP does not undergo reconstruction reduces to the observation that the negative ingredient cannot reconstruct, and we suggest why this should be so. If we are correct, the analysis removes an obstacle to the view that A-chains exhibit syntactic reconstruction.

The paper argues that Possession is to be decomposed into three distinct syntactic configurations, each associated with its own meaning. These include Temporary Location, represented as an ordinary small clause, the Part-Whole relation, which always has a complement structure within DP as its source, and an applicative structure ApplP, the source of inalienable possession, where humans are treated as special. The analysis we propose extends to English, but focuses on Palestinian Arabic, a language which overtly distinguishes a number of ingredients which in other languages enter into Possession less transparently: it is 'analytic' with respect to HAVE, it marks Temporary Location and Part-Whole relations by distinct prepositions, and it features a scope-marking poor agreement / rich agreement distinction. The picture which emerges is partly familiar and partly new. We argue that the subject in possessive clauses is a derived subject in the alienable, inalienable, and Part-Whole relations, but not necessarily in the non-human locative relation, where raising to specIP is governed by considerations of economy and variation in the morpho-syntax of agreement. We also argue that clausal possession has a DP as its source, but only on the Part-Whole construal, drawing on previous work on the DP-internal semantics of possession. Finally, the applicative structure, on our conception, may be basic, or derived by head-movement, as it is in English, and it may be headed by an overt preposition, or simply contain an abstract head, as it does in PA. If we are correct, the difference between HAVE and BE may further reduce to parametric realization of prepositions in ApplP. The analysis we develop leads to a new division of labor between phi-features and the triggers for A-movement, according to which phi-features exert their effect on syntax only from the interfaces. Whereas rich agreement fixes scope, visible at LF, the EPP, as such, is regulated only at PF. Deconstructing PossessionBoneh & Sichel 2 Deconstructing PossessionNora Boneh and Ivy Sichel IntroductionThe term 'possession' typically conflates a variety of notions. The relations which may be expressed by English HAVE, for example, stretch beyond inalienable and alienable possession, in (1a-c), to include also Temporary Location of various sorts, in (1d-f):(1) a.The tree has many branches b.John has three kids c. John has three blankets d. Mary has the car e. John has three blankets on him f. The tree has three nests *(in it)The grammatical realization of these relations is governed by several conditions having to do with whether the possessee is definite, whether the possessor DP denotes a human, and whether the head noun denotes a function. Our goal here is to identify the underlying syntactic structures and the procedures which derive the semantic relations with which they are associated.Following up on the syntactic decomposition in Hornstein et al. (1995), and bringing it to bear relation, which we take to be broader than inalienable possession, and a Tem...

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